Modernism

Mircea Cărtărescu About The Modernity Of Romanian Literature

* It's not easy being a Romanian writer. There is a double misunderstanding regarding the perception of Romanian culture abroad. Before referring to it, I must say that the idea of national writer is itself a misunderstanding. If in sport a sort of benign vanity makes

The Nightmarish Dreaming Of Max Blecher

The reverie aims to take hold of imaginary territories when the real ones are missing. Max BLECHER In his novels and especially in Occurrences in Current Unreality this process of dreaming turns into an account of an immediate unreality. I-mediated to be more accurate,

Bridge Over Dry Land

This issue is dedicated to some of the most significant bizarre, atypical figures in Romanian literature. Although it consists of a selection of literary sketches and fragments of novels, it can be best described as an anthology of twentieth-century poetic prose, stretching

Kollectian

Just think that I paid it once, and it pays me off a lifetime instead. * Zambaccian on a canvas by Pallady Having great collectors represents as big a chance for a culture as having great artists. Flourishing arts are hardly imaginable when wealthy art-lovers are missing,

Editor's Note - Memento Vivere

It seems almost provocative to launch such an issue on the local pleasures, pastimes and delights, while nowadays a troublesome Romania appears as plunged into unending economic and social difficulties, striving to cope with various shortcomings and weaknesses. However,

Woolen Gardens

European travelers such as Antonio Maria del Chiaro were struck long time ago by the uncommon abundance of woolen carpets in each Romanian home, be it aristocratic, bourgeois or peasant. Carpets were laid mainly onto the walls of the rooms, but they also covered the beds,

Exuviae

excerpt I was to deal with this vague feeling, this bizarre, somewhat abstract and pure love three times during my teenage years. I had come into this huge and empty room, lured by some strange music that I always found irresistible, insinuating, intoxicating and dangerous.

Fucked Up

excerpts 30. The ass and the airCane and Tolstoi on the train. They talked about the status of the writer in society, how good it was during communism when writers were given cars, villas and fat paychecks. Of course you would keep on writing; today you write and everyone's

A Shortcoming

If we were to maintain that the erotic language as an independent writing mode has at present been obliterated from Romanian literature, we would, perhaps, make a serious overstatement, but not lie entirely: it might seem peculiar, but this European literature, which is

Ways Of Seeing

Minority ethnic groups have usually developed some separate cultures within the larger framework of the majority. Their particular language and specific customs generally single out such societies. From the cultural point of view, the main characteristics of a minority society

Nationally-Specific Art In Interwar Romania

Art history is usually at ease when imposing its own concepts and technical terminology upon an apparently unconscious body of visual accomplishments called works of art. For art historians and art critics, art seemingly exists in order for theorists to put words on it and

Religion And Identity In Interwar Romania: Orthodoxism

In the two decades between the world wars the majority of Romanian intellectuals were engaged in a grand debate about what it meant to be Romanian and how national character determined social and political development. [1] The ideological commitments of the protagonists